Weary
Spirits
Burns
It burns
Like acid
On exposed skin.
The world manifests its joy
In displays of grandeur,
Laughing at me
While holding me at a distance.
I built a magnificent castle,
Laying brick by brick by brick
Against miles of meadows
And perfectly-trimmed hedges.
But I am its sole occupant,
And no one else
Has ever bothered
To come see it.
And so it will decay
With my body,
Becoming nothing more than a curiosity
For archaeologists of the future.
Depression, it burns
Like acid on exposed skin.
The Desert
The desert stretches out
As far as I can see
In every direction.
The horizon
Blurs into oblivion—
There is no escape.
I am parched beyond measure;
My skin boils under the heat
Of a relentless sun.
I cannot die,
Though I wish I could
And bring an end to all this.
Though I run in one direction
With cracked bones
Piercing through paper-like skin.
I can never escape it,
Doomed
To keep running,
No respite, no end,
The panic goes on.
True Strength
They say
You will never face
A struggle
More powerful
Than you can take.
They’re wrong.
There will be many times
In your life
When you come up against things
That you cannot overcome.
And that’s okay.
True strength is not
Trying to be stronger
Than anything that may come.
True strength is being willing
To admit
That you
Are not strong enough
On your own.
The Easy Way Out
Some say medication is the easy way out.
They think that if you just
Do enough yoga,
Drink enough tea,
Or smoke enough weed,
Then somehow this mental mess
Will be magically cured
And the tides
Of imbalanced chemicals
Will somehow shift
Into proper form
And there will be peace
At last. . . .
If only that were true.
I’m not ashamed
To say I took the “easy way out,”
Because this is not a battle
I can win on my own
And there is so much serenity
In admitting that.
I took the easy way out
Because I am not strong enough
On my own.
The Uncertain Road
Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
Admitting this evokes fear.
Uncertainty. Possibility of failure. Difficulty.
The road is dark and full of obstacles.
Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
But this is liberating.
Uncertainty becomes adventure;
Possible failure makes success all the sweeter—
Difficulty makes it more rewarding
Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
Although it is fraught with peril, life’s
Uncertainty, once accepted, becomes
Its greatest source of joy and happiness.
The Train of Thought
Suddenly I am ahead of it,
Questioning its direction,
Confused, thinking that these
Ideas don’t quite sound like me.
I think it’s happening again.
I wish I were strong enough
To will this planet
To stop spinning so quickly.
I am glued in place,
Powerless to move,
In denial that this panic
Belongs to me.
I thought I was doing better
But stability does not love me back.
I hate how powerless I am
Over my own mind.
Whirl of Chaos
The day flies past
In a whirl of chaos
Flashing by
All too quickly.
Trying to slow down
And find a moment
Of peace
Feels as impossible
As stopping
The rotation of the earth
With my own two hands.
The Offer of Escape
We dance every night, you and I,
Long past the midnight hour.
Though we never touch
The temptation is always there.
Escape.
Your promises are too good to be true.
You say freedom is just a touch away
And there will be no consequences for me;
The last page will turn, the story complete.
Temptation.
Your hand, outstretched to me,
Begging for my surrender—
But for one more night, at least,
I resist, and the game starts over.
Demons
As a kid I was told
That mental illness
Is just the result of demons
Inhabiting the body.
I was taught
That if I just prayed hard enough,
I would be set free.
Those demons
Still follow me today—
Years of suffering,
Thinking it was all my fault
For not believing hard enough
—Some scars that may never heal.
Grasping
Peace,
Elusive
As grasping
For the wind.
It moves here and there
No matter how hard you try;
You cannot take it
In your hands.
All you can do
Is sit still,
Give up all delusions
Of control,
And let peace
Find you
Where you are.
Simple Life
I wonder whether that simple life
I see walking down the street
Would make me happy.
That man with his wife
Walking with their young son—
They look so peaceful together.
I feel so lost in what I want
I do not know what life I desire
Or where it would lead me.
Writer’s Block
The pen aches to write
But the mind
Is a barren wasteland.
The soul begs to erupt
With feeling and passion
But only ash coughs out.
The heart is illiterate
Yet desperate to be understood
Scribbling nonsensical symbols.
Could Have Been
The could-have-been
Of our story
Is what really hurts.
At least if we had tried and failed,
There would be closure
And that road would be clearly marked
As a dead end.
But there is no catharsis,
Only mixed feelings—
What-ifs and I-wishes.
And we will die wondering
What we could have built
Together
If we’d tried.
Salt in the Wind
Purpose. Destiny. Calling. Meaning.
I tasted just a hint of them
In the salty air by the sea,
Coming back to this place
I had not visited
In so many years.
It was like I could feel
Who I was
The last time I was here,
And suddenly I was filled
With the most bitter remorse
Over what I had become since then:
A man hunting after shadows
Of the convictions that used to
Overflow.
Fighter
You have fought your way
Through deserts and jungles,
Pressing water from the leaves,
Wrapping bloody feet
With makeshift bandages.
You have fought
Your way through life,
Not out of desire
But necessity.
I am proud of how far
You have managed to come
Despite your challenges.
One day I wish to see you
Lay down your weapons
And find solace in peace.
Bloody
They trampled over the masses
On their way to greater riches
Not even bothering
To clean the blood off their shoes.
Freedom
Forced to be crushed under the heel
Of exploitative masters
Is not freedom.
Being free to choose
Which insurance company screws you
Is not freedom.
Being free to choose death
Over medical bankruptcy
Is not freedom.
Being free to choose between
Exploitation and starvation
Is not freedom.
We need to pay more attention
To the price of freedom;
It is rising.
Poison
They will never understand the effort it takes people like us just to get up in the morning, to face the day as if the very thought of it doesn’t crush us.
They will never understand the way it feels to worry about and question every aspect of your life, to have the precious moments poisoned by insecurity. They will never understand, and that makes it all the more difficult because ignorance leads to resentment, and our fear of being resented only leads to more anxiety.
To us, drinking poison is a daily ritual. It just hurts all the more coming from those we love.
Trust Issues
Understand that I may never quite believe you when you tell me you love me, and I may never trust that the sun will come up again the next morning even though I have seen it thousands of times before.
Understand that no matter how much I love you, there will always be a part of me that is so afraid of being hurt that it is always vigilant, waiting for the first sign of confirmation that I am as unlovable as I always suspected.
Understand that though I am damaged and weary from battles lost, I will never stop fighting for you and your happiness, no matter what it costs me.
First Draft
I am often so concerned with creating something perfect on the first try that I do not try to create something new at all out of fear of failure. I have this ingrained idea, which will not loosen no matter how hard I try, that I cannot be seen as unfinished in any aspect. That is why this time—
Unuttered Words
I keep this secret book
Of unuttered words
Locked away
In the recesses
Of my soul.
Shrouded in darkness,
Its every page
Is scarred with memories
And untold truths.
I think each one of them
Will follow me to the grave
As if they never existed.
Sad in Paradise
You can be sad in paradise too, you know.
I thought
That if I flew away
And escaped my troubles
On the beaches
Of this beautiful island,
Then I would leave
My sadness behind
And feel
New.
But it was not to be.
No change of scenery
Can change what’s inside of you;
The battle follows us everywhere—
There is no solace, no rest.
Memento Mori
Hold death always before your eyes;
Let it cast its long shadow over your sunny days.
For though we transmute stone into power,
Our ingenuity cloaking us in the powers of gods,
Though we beat back our mortality
With modern medicine and technology,
Still death is patient,
Creeping slowly toward us
As the decades flow by.
Each one of us meets our end
In our due time.
But death is only a mirror.
Death is a teacher, a friend
Allowing us to know
The importance of the present.
Mortality is solace.
Kings and Queens of Bridges Burned
We were king and queen
Of the ashes,
Of every bridge we burned
Leading back to our pasts.
We forsook the easy answers,
Finding solace in broken mirrors,
The ambiguity of this road of ours
Leading neither here nor there.
To See the Stars
Stasis is comfortable.
It asks nothing of us.
But at some point
You have to ask yourself
If you’d rather
Stay comfortable
And never climb the mountain
To see the stars.
Tempered by Pain
Iron cannot become steel
Without going through the fire.
And so it is the same
With you
And the hard times
In your life.
You cannot become your best self
Without being tempered by pain.
A Fistful of Sand in the Wind
Life just won’t slow down
Though I plant my feet
Firmly on the ground.
It seems
That the seconds keep getting shorter
And life flies
Ever more quickly
Out of my hands,
Like a fistful of sand
Held in the wind.
Before too long
Life will pass me by.
I fear that it will feel
Empty and unloved,
Merely a blur,
The days and years
Coalescing
Into mundane gray.
Flashbacks
The most random things
Trigger old memories.
They drift into the present,
Tangled strings
Linking the then and the now
Like ships’ anchors
Which never found
The ocean’s floor.
The times are so different
And I often wonder
Whether they can possibly be real.
It doesn’t make sense
That all of these colored moments
Can coexist.
I yearn
For a time that never existed,
When all of this made sense.
The 28th of February
The worst night of my life
Was the 28th of February.
It started off as a simple evening
Hanging out with friends
But became a panic attack
That never seemed to end.
I asked my friends to leave;
It seemed like their every word
Stretched out for a thousand years.
Everything turned to wax,
My heart rate was a machine gun,
And I could barely breathe,
Stuck in a moment of complete fear.
I had to go to the emergency room;
The walls were closing in on me.
Friendly faces were unrecognizable.
Nothing would hold still.
I was gone.
It hurt too much to bear:
My confidence splintered,
My sense of self forever damaged—
That night never ended;
No, it stays with me still.
Every Breath a Battle
You live many lives,
Most of them
At war
With one another.
That is the nature
Of human existence;
We can never be truly happy
Because we are not capable
Of accepting our lives
Without wondering
What could have been,
And there remains part of each of us
That wants a different outcome.
And we wish we could drown
The defectors within ourselves
And silence their voices
Forevermore.
And so we are left
With a happiness
That can never be
Complete.
Anxious
I have heard so many people
Say that anxiety is silly,
But they don’t know what it feels like
To have a mind
Constantly at war with itself,
Constantly fighting an endless battle
Where all you ever do is lose.
They don’t know what it feels like
To not be able to enjoy life
Without second-guessing your place
In anything and everything.
You can no more
Defeat your own anxiety
Than you can will your heart to stop beating.
Triumph
We are not
A collection of failures
Because of the things
We did not win.
We are a collection of triumphs,
A middle finger raised high
Against the forces in life
That wanted to see us stay down.
We are triumphant
Because we kept fighting
Even when it seemed
Like all was lost.
Hues of Melancholy
There it is. The feeling of being alone. It’s been a while, but I remember you. Yes, I’ve been happy for a while now, but god knows that never lasts, and I had almost forgotten your memory. But there it is, that frigid, icy-blue sadness. I can’t ever escape you for long, can I? I can’t even be happy without tasting you in the back of my mouth, knowing it’ll end and soon you’ll consume my every sense. Your scent lingers like a strong cologne, coloring even my brightest moments with hues of melancholy. There is no freedom—there is only this. And here I am, again . . . alone.
Vrai
It was real. It was all real.
As real as anything has ever been
Or ever seemed to be:
The night’s sky ebbed
Into a pool of ink.
I was falling
Endlessly downward,
Unable to breathe.
At long last I gave up
And the liquid filled my lungs,
Leaking into my veins.
Suddenly I was weightless,
Floating among the stars,
Unchained from the gravity
Of the earth.
Conflicting Desires
I hope you read this
And know
How I really feel about you.
I hope you never read this
And never know
How I really feel about you.
Final
We fool ourselves into thinking
That we are afraid of the unknown,
Of the meaning of life,
When truthfully
We have known all along
And are just too afraid
To admit it:
There is no higher meaning,
There is no greater purpose,
There is no transcendence—
Death is final.
But that is not something
To be afraid of;
It’s something
To embrace.
Both the magnificent and the macabre,
The glorious and the grotesque.
Not in This Life
Life disappears in a blink
And suddenly it’s over,
Dreams dormant and unfulfilled,
Our minds a collection
Of could-have-beens.
Perhaps it would’ve been better
To never know of the stars
And have a soul desperate to touch them
Than to have known of them,
All too aware
That they could never be touched.
At least, not in this life.
The Winding Road
I don’t know if these confusing and winding roads will someday lead to the place I need to be. I can only hope that one day, as I look in the rearview mirror, I will be able to see that this was all guiding me toward my destiny. I can only hope that this serpentine road will someday make sense, and all of my struggles will add up to something worth it.
Ocean
The mind is an ocean;
The surface ripples
With chaotic energy,
But deep down
In the endless depths
There is a stillness,
Seemingly outside of time.
There is nothing
In all directions,
Only the feeling
Of floating
In the silence.
Find this place
In your moments of stress;
Find the peace
Of the depths.
Our Dreams
I remember people by their dreams,
By their hopes and fears;
I hold on to these strings of the soul
Because surface details change:
Hair turns gray
And memories fade.
But the bare nakedness of a person,
Their deepest core
That has burned with desire
Since it was formed of stardust
Eons ago,
These things are more a person
Than the disposable husks
We call bodies.
These things rage on,
Giving us purpose and life,
For it is our dreams
That burn our fingerprints
Into the fabric of the universe.
It is our dreams that make us immortal.
The Way Things Used to Look
It seems to me that the atmosphere of life
Feels distinctly different from time to time.
Our memories are tinged with the colors
Of its hues and vibrancy.
I feel, for instance,
That the summers of my youth
Were so much more red and yellow
Than the colors of the moment.
They were infected with optimism,
Permeated with a carefree lightness,
Everything airy and warm,
Unaware of seeing the future.
The cold of an early spring
Prickles the hairs on the back of my neck
Even now, even now
Just in remembrance of it.
As I came of age: the dull, muted green
That colored all things
And the golden, glowing radiance
Of a time only remembered in shadows.
Weary Spirits
Place your weary spirit
Between my arms.
Lonely as it may be,
We are less alone
Against this cold world
When we hold each other:
Two weary spirits
Finding a little warmth
Together.
Breaking the Cycle
“I want a divorce,” she said to him, dropping the papers on the table that were already bearing her signature. “What?” he replied. “I’m not fucking signing that.” I watched, peeking out from around the corner, grasping the faded paint of that wall with my small hands, wondering if this meant a future of two half-families. I turned away and ran to my room, pushing away the end of this story like a horror movie you just can’t finish. I’ll never threaten someone I love with something so awful, I promised myself. I’ll never treat someone like this; I’ll never be like either of them; I’ll find my own path. I’ll never be like them. The shouting was so loud that night that I ran to the edge of our three acres of forest and still couldn’t escape the noises echoing across the landscape like shells obliterating a battlefield. I covered my ears, and still the muffled sounds broke through.
We are not destined to relive the sins of our fathers. The mistakes of those who came before us are not written into our DNA. The choice to transcend rather than imitate remains ours.
I am not them. I will never act like them. I am my own, and I will not hurt others the way I was hurt.
Life Is Precious
Life is far too
Precious a gift to
Waste.
Our time on this earth
Is a mere blink.
And yet this is
Paradoxical:
As we seek to
Skim the cream
From the best of
Life,
We neglect
Everything else,
The smaller things
That make it
Feel all the more complete.
The Raging River
Now that the current
Of that raging river
Has been dammed up,
Now that the waves
No longer coalesce
Into violent swells,
I don’t miss the chaos
The way I thought
I would.
I find joy in the balance,
And rest in the serenity
Of peace at last.
Here is love without jealousy,
Passion without anger,
And hope without anxiety.
The monsoons have subsided,
The seasons have changed,
And I’m all the better for it.
